Scathing editorial in the New York Times this morning. Everyone should read it. Here’s how it starts:
“President Bush has turned the executive branch into a two-way mirror. They get to see everything Americans do: our telephone calls, e-mail, and all manner of personal information. And we get to see nothing about what they do.”
and the big finish:
“Governments have to keep secrets. But this administration has grossly abused that trust, routinely using claims of national security to hide policies that are immoral and almost certainly illegal, to avoid embarrassment, and to pursue Mr. Bush’s dreams of an imperial presidency.”
It makes me so incredibly angry to be treated this way by our own government. And yet I feel that we’re about to head into the 2008 election and make it just about petty politics again, instead of about fundamental directions of our government, and fundamental ways of operating that are being obliterated.
The great French political philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, once said, “The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.†That quote was uttered several decades ago, but it definitely seems as if, during this election cycle, it’s been ringing true nationwide. In this case, we have elected officials and hopefuls who, for some reason or another, at least claim to believe that cash advances are detrimental to the American people. With this in mind, some of them have gone so far as to propose measures that would knock the entire industry out of certain states, or even America! Governor Ted Strickland, of Ohio, is one of these people, whose new law, if passed, would knock the industry out and send 6,000 of his people to the unemployment line. What’s worse, both current Presidential hopefuls, Barack Obama and John McCain supported a bill that ultimately banned payday loans to military personnel. Furthermore, Obama has come out in support of measures that would make it impossible for these short term lenders to continue operating. An aristocracy is one where one ruling class makes decisions on behalf of everyone else. Let’s just hope that those old aristocratic colors don’t bleed through when deciding the fate of payday loans.
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